Beijing 2022 Winter Games boycott ‘ineffective’, says US Olympic committee president Susanne Lyons

USOPC president says boycotts ‘only hurt athletes’ and China’s human rights record should be addressed by governments

Lyons reiterates 1980 Moscow Games boycott ‘was not accomplished’ as US senators urge for allowing new bids

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Workers discuss at the Zhangjiakou National Ski Jumping Centre under construction for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in Zhangjiakou in Hebei province last December. Photo: AP

Published: 11:21am, 11 Mar 2021Updated: 11:20am, 11 Mar 2021

The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) reiterated its opposition to a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on Wednesday following calls for US athletes to skip the event over China’s human rights record.

USOPC president Susanne Lyons said boycotts were ineffective and unfairly penalised athletes who had been preparing for the Games.

“While we would never want to minimise what is happening from a human rights perspective in China, we do not support an athlete boycott,” Lyons said, citing the case of the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

“We believe such boycotts have not been effective in the past, particularly in 1980,” Lyons said. “Those boycotts only hurt athletes who have trained their entire lives for this opportunity to represent their country. We believe this is an issue that should be addressed at a government to government level with China.”

Aerial photo of the snow covered Zhangjiakou competition zone of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province. Photo: Xinhua

The Games are scheduled to begin on February 4 next year, just six months after the delayed summer Tokyo Olympics.

China is facing global scrutiny over a range of issues, notably the mass internment of Uygur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang, which the US has said amounts to genocide.